pentagon acquisition reform

Auftragstaktik: Decentralization in Military CommandBy Kevin Kallmes, Notes on Liberty: “Many 20th century theorists who advocated central planning and control (from Gaetano Mosca to Carl Landauer, and hearkening back to Plato’s Republic) drew a direct analogy between economic control and military command, envisioning a perfectly functioning state in which the citizens mimic the hard work and obedience of soldiers. This analogy did not remain theoretical: the regimes of Mussolini, Hitler, and Lenin all attempted to model economies along military principles . . . ” ​

Multi-Domain Battle: An Emerging Operational Doctrine By Amos C. Fox, Small Wars Journal: “The 19th century Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz defined war in three ways. He postulated that war is a duel, an act of force to compel one’s enemy to do its will, and a collision of living forces. Further, Clausewitz stated that the use of force is the means of war, and that the true aim of war is to render the enemy powerless, “That the grand objective of all military action is to overthrow the enemy – which means destroying his armed forces.””

Fight, Survive, Win - Imagining Multi-Domain BattleBy Mark Olsen, Strategy Bridge: “The United States faces a changing and more uncertain military future. The military dominance that the United States easily assumed following the end of the Cold War – and demonstrated in the Gulf War – is no longer so assured. Potential American adversaries are developing capabilities to challenge American strengths. The American military must develop new concepts and capabilities to continue to guarantee the military supremacy Americans expect. ”​

Multi-Domain Confusion: All Domains Are Not Created EqualBy Erik Heftye, Strategy Bridge: “Words matter. They frame thoughts and influence concepts by shaping perceptions, preferences, and priorities in the form of tacitly embedded assumptions. Unfortunately, military conceptual frameworks are often encapsulated in jargon and buzzwords that periodically dominate the landscape of Pentagon briefing slides. Notable past examples of these operational concept catchphrases include: Active Defense, AirLand Battle, Full-Spectrum Dominance, Network-Centric Warfare, Effects-Based Operations, Anti-Access/Area Denial, and AirSea Battle. The latest conceptual phrase to command the spotlight is Multi-Domain Battle, which was officially unveiled by the US Army’s Training and Doctrine Commander, General David Perkins, at the Association of the U.S. Army’s Annual Meeting and Exposition on October 4, 2016.”

F-35 and Missile Defense Orders Expand OverseasBy Gillian Rich, Investor's Business Daily: “Lockheed Martin expects more international orders for its F-35 fighter aircraft and the company's missile-defense system, as global tensions spur demand for U.S. military hardware. Raytheon's Patriot air-defense system has also been in demand in the Mideast and Asia. After the company landed big orders from Saudi Arabia in 2015, South Korea and Japan now plan to upgrade their Patriot systems, and a contract topping $7 billion is expected soon from Poland. Lockheed makes the PAC-3 missile for the Patriot system.”

While North Korea threatens to shoot and sink American aircraft carriers and launch nuclear weapons, Pacific Command is running short of precision-guided munitions. And Pacific Command does not have enough surface ships, submarines and antimissile radars to keep up with current and emerging threats, its commander Adm. Harry Harris told the House Armed Services Committee today. – Breaking Defense

Russian Nuclear Weapons Policy:Implications for US Nuclear Deterrence and Missile DefenseBy Mark B. Schneider, RealClearDefense: “Unlike the U.S., nuclear forces are Russia’s highest military priority. In December 2016, President Putin declared Russia is “stronger than any potential aggressor,” has modernized almost 60% of its strategic forces and directed that Russia further strengthen its nuclear Triad. In March 2017, he said that modernizing Russian military forces “concerns the strategic nuclear forces, above all.” In January 2017, Russian Defense Minister General of the Army Sergei Shoigu stated that development of the strategic nuclear force was Russia’s first priority, noting Russia will “continue a massive program of nuclear rearmament, deploying modern ICBMs on land and sea, [and] modernizing the strategic bomber force.””

Interview: In this interview with William McKenzie, editor of The Catalyst, and retired Army Colonel Miguel Howe, director of the George W. Bush Institute’s Military Service Initiative, Secretary Gates describes the threats he believes the nation and its military must prepare for next. - The CatalystRep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX) writes: Two characteristics define the security environment facing the United States in the 21st century. One is that we face a wider array of serious challenges than ever before. The second is that the pace of change is accelerating. This combination of many threats changing ever more rapidly tests our traditional notions of armed conflict, as well as the organizations and systems we have relied upon to defend the country for the past 70 years. – The Catalyst

Interview: Before the U.S. can determine its military budget, it first needs to know the threats the nation faces. The Catalyst convened two leading security thinkers from different starting points to discuss those threats: Thomas Donnelly, a defense and security policy analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, and Michael O’Hanlon, a foreign and defense policy expert at the Brookings Institution. – The Catalyst

Distributed Lethality and the Failure to Break Naval StovepipesBy Wes Hammond, Strategy Bridge: “The balkanization of the Navy’s personnel structure threatens the fleet’s ability to conduct naval maneuver warfare in the emerging contested sea control environment. For over 70 years (and particularly after the Cold War ended), U.S. naval supremacy has allowed the U.S. Navy to view the sea as a sanctuary to operate from. It could focus on leveraging the advantages of sea control to project power and influence, as opposed to fighting to achieve it.”

China’s first domestically built aircraft carrier slipped into the sea for the first time on Wednesday, after days of publicity celebrating the impending launch as a milestone in President Xi Jinping’s drive to extend China’s military reach far beyond its shores. – New York Times

CHINA: Tracking China's Second, Indigenous Aircraft CarrierFromChina Power, CSIS: “Five years after commissioning its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, China is now primed to launch its second carrier – the Type 001A. Unlike its Soviet-built predecessor, the Type 001A is China’s first domestically built carrier. Both carriers are similar in size and use a STOBAR (Short Take-Off But Arrested Recovery) system for the launch and recovery of aircraft. Although similar to the Liaoning, the Type 001A features some notable enhancements and represents an important step in China’s developing aircraft carrier program.”

What It Would Really Take to Sink a Modern Aircraft Carrier By Robert Farley, Jalopnik: “There's a lot of consternation about whether or not the United States should even have massive supercarriers anymore. Obviously, the answer here is "depends on how much explosives you've got." But while sinking an aircraft carrier is difficult, it's not impossible. The key is what it's used for, and who it's used against. But if you wanted to sink one, here's what you'd have to do, and what you'd be up against." ​

The Pentagon is scheduled to complete the review by the end of the year, an essential step as the military seeks to modernize different aspects of its nuclear deterrent. But a new report from the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, or UNIDR, argues that as the modern battlefield becomes more technologically complex, crowded with more sensors, satellites, drones, and interconnected networks, the risks of another nuclear accident are growing, not shrinking. – Defense One

China's Embattled Military Modernization From Stratfor: “China's sweeping military reforms are proceeding apace. In a meeting in Beijing on Tuesday with the country's top military leadership, President Xi Jinping announced the start of the next phase in the effort to thoroughly modernize the Chinese military. The program, launched in late 2015, aims to enable China to wage modern warfare by updating the military's structure, its command and control, and, in particular, its service branches' ability to conduct joint operations. Xi's latest announcement highlights his administration's progress with the plan, expected to be in place by 2020. Nevertheless, it will be a hard-fought campaign for Beijing.” ​

At a Pacific Crossroads:U.S. Must Prepare for Present, Future Threats in Dynamic Region From Robert B. Brown, AUSA: “A robust alliance network and series of security partnerships have been the cornerstone of stability and prosperity in the Indo-Asian-Pacific region since the conclusion of World War II. However, since that time, many key economic and security issues have changed in this theater. This has created a new dynamic that must be addressed by those wishing to maintain the international order that has provided so much to the region. Indeed, we are at a crossroads with institutional and operational challenges facing the Army as well as the joint force, together with our multinational allies and partners.” ​

From Cultural Intelligence to Cultural UnderstandingFrom Lawrence E. Cline, Small Wars Journal: “One of the critical areas in recent operations that has been identified as a major shortfall for the Army has been that of understanding the cultures and societies in which it has been operating. Virtually every report that has analyzed problems in Iraq and Afghanistan has noted a lack of cultural understanding, leading to difficulties in conducting operations. In particular, the report from Major General Michael Flynn et al. described a series of weaknesses in understanding the Afghan people and culture. The Flynn report in many ways argued that the U.S. military was not really living up to its doctrine of a more population-centric approach, and considerably greater attention needed to be paid to this aspect of COIN. ” ​

But those years have taken us from cliche to crisis. Three factors have combined to create an emergency in airpower. First is the wear and tear imposed by nearly 16 years of combat. Second are with the massive, reckless cuts in defense spending imposed by President Obama which, under the Budget Control Act of 2011, are scheduled to continue for at least four years. Third is the near-criminal neglect of our forces by Mr. Obama’s generals and admirals. As a result, so many of our combat aircraft are incapable of flying combat missions that the president is deprived of options that may be critical to any war, large or small.

Air power — the ability to clear the skies of enemy aircraft and destroy the enemy’s ground forces — has been a critical element of warfare for nearly a century. Offensively and defensively, air power is the sine qua non of military action.

Constant pilot training and American technological advantages have meant that every generation of American fighter pilots since World War II has inherited air supremacy — domination of the skies — as a birthright. That is no longer the case.

Defense Secretary James Mattis has privately told Congress the Trump administration's Pentagon budget request isn't sufficient to cover the cost of rebuilding the military as President Donald Trump has vowed to do, four sources familiar with the conversations told CNN. - CNN

Mackenzie Eaglen and Gary Schmitt write: As things stand, OMB director Mick Mulvaney's attempt to find sufficient "offsets" in the nondefense budgets to match the increase in defense spending dollar for dollar has been a nonstarter with Democrats. Finding that new "golden ratio" will require compromise by House Republicans and Senate Democrats and leadership from a White House that prioritizes national security. Normally, a supplemental appropriations bill is only that. In this case, it could be, and should be, seen as much more. – The Weekly Standard

Organizational Agility: Winning in Today’s Complex EnvironmentFrom Zayn Knaub, Strategy Bridge: “What does it take for militaries to win in today’s interconnected, interdependent, and complex environment? I would argue that in contrast with the battlefield of the past, today’s environment demands much more organizational agility. I define organizational agility as the degree to which a team or company is resourceful and adept at flexing in response to both internal and external factors. An agile organization has the ability to be radically innovative, adapt, and institute process improvement with grace in a rapidly changing, complex environment.” ​

The Necessity of Self-Sacrifice From Robert Mihara, Strategy Bridge: “Jus in bello and jus ad bellum require an explicit understanding of what gives one’s survival moral standing and what should supersede the primacy of moral and physical self-preservation. Self-sacrifice as a first principle helps strategists to remain faithful to the essential characteristics of a nation’s vital national interests, and it can prevent them from getting lost in moral absolutism when taken as a first among equals rather than as an overriding imperative. In other words, an attitude of self-sacrifice enables strategists to make strategic choices. This principle of self-abnegation is of foremost importance to strategists because its antithesis in limited wars effectively precludes the proper function of strategy and thereby undermines the utility of war.” ​

Advising in Small Wars From Zachary Griffiths, Small Wars Journal: “Good advisors rebuilt the PRC with trust earned through shared sweat and combat. Neither the small war fundamentals nor considerations explain how to be a good advisor. The Institute for National Strategic Studies codified the strategic lessons of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in Lessons Encountered: Learning from the Long War. Though Lessons Encountered takes a high-level view of those conflicts, Colonel Hammes strikes center-of-mass in his chapter Raising and Mentoring Security Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan when he describes local security forces as “our ticket home.””

Lockheed Martin views the multi-domain warfare concept as so important it is funding and holding a series of classified war games to explore strategies, Concepts of Operation and weapons to see how they might perform taking on an A2/AD opponent. – Breaking DefenseWere the United States to go to war with Russia, both sides could draw on deadly weapons that the world has never seen on a battlefield. On the Russian side, there are new and smaller tactical nuclear weapons. To counter them, the U.S. Army is taking another look at a “devastating” weapon it first tested in 2013: the Kinetic Energy Projectile, or KEP, a tungsten-based charge moving at three times the speed of sound that can destroy anything in its path. – Defense OneMackenzie Eaglen writes: At the end of the day, the increasingly polarized U.S. political environment, combined with the popularity of the barbell investment strategy among the relevant policymakers, bodes ill for the sort of buying bonanza that defense contractors had hoped for with Republican control of the White House and both chambers of Congress. With enough funding, however, hopeful signs exist in certain sectors of the branches and in the legislature. – Foreign Affairs

F-22 Raptor Versus Russian Air Defenses in Syria From Dave Majumdar, The National Interest: “The stealthy supersonically cruising air superiority fighters are the only fighters in the U.S. inventory that can safely fly within the engagement envelope of Russian S-400 and S300V4 surface-to-air missiles defense while the Pentagon ascertains how the Kremlin will respond to the American cruise missile attack on Syria last week.” ​

U.S., JAPAN: Japan: US Marine Corps F-35B Fighter Jets Gearing up for Combat From Franz-Stefan Gady, The Diplomat: “U.S. Marine Corps Fighter Attack Squadron 121, the service’s first overseas-deployed F-35B squadron, has conducted a hot-reload exercise at an airbase in Iwakuni in Yamaguchi Prefecture on April 6. It was the first time that ordnance was loaded onto a running F-35B, the U.S. Marine Corps variant of the supersonic fifth-generation F-35B Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, capable of vertical or short takeoffs and vertical landings without requiring a catapult launcher.”

Tet à Tête: Vietnamese Exploitation of American Misapprehension From Olivia Garard, Strategy Bridge: “The Vietnam War is an aggregate of two very different wars: the Vietnamese war for independence and the American war to contain Communism. Linguistically, this contradiction is manifest in each country’s labels used to describe the war. America refers to the conflict as the Vietnam War, whereas Vietnam considers it either the American War in Vietnam or the Second Indochina War. From the American point of view, the Vietnam War was fought against the specter of Communism with Vietnam defined explicitly as the enemy. However, the Vietnamese considered the American War in Vietnam to be an American construct, an invasion and battle against their ability and right to define themselves. America, after the French in the First Indochina War, became the second imperialist defeated by the Vietnamese in their quest for independence and self-determination. The Vietnamese saw continuity between the two wars because they were—from their perspective—the same war of independence. The fervent nationalism did not change or dissipate between the First and the Second Indochina War—only the enemy did. These labels of the war are symptomatic of the fundamental and existential incompatibilities of the war America was fighting and the war Vietnam was fighting.” ​

Preparing for 2035: The Navy's Role in Shaping the Future From Will Wiley, Strategy Bridge: “On 15 October 2036, the USS ZUMWALT (DDG-1000) glides through the Philippines Sea on the twentieth anniversary of its commissioning. Nearby, the USS ENTERPRISE (CVN-80) launches both the F-35C and the unmanned F-47C to jointly conduct bombing raids on the Navy’s Western Pacific bombing range. Both ships, along with the entire ENTERPRISE Carrier Strike Group, are headed toward the South China Sea to participate in the annual US-India-Singapore naval exercise called DRAGON FURY. Below the surface, the USS MONTANA (SSN-794) deploys the unmanned underwater vehicle called SEA-EYE to assist in trailing a Russian Dolgorukiy class SSBN as it leaves port headed to its strategic patrol areas.”

Realign the Army for Multi-domain Battle From Nathan A. Jennings, AUSA: “Following more than a decade of counterinsurgency focus, the U.S. Army has found itself increasingly challenged by adversaries in Eastern Europe and East Asia who are modernizing their area denial capabilities. As argued by Gen. Mark A. Milley, the 39th chief of staff of the Army, “Land-based forces now are going to have to penetrate denied areas for the rest of the joint force” while having the capacity to “operate in all domains simultaneously.”” ​

Maritime Power and U.S. Strategic Influence in Asia From Patrick Cronin, War on the Rocks: “Three decades ago, Gen. Liu Huaqing, the military commander who modernized China’s navy declared, “Without an aircraft carrier, I will die with my eyelids open.” When he passed away in 2011, China had finally started building an aircraft carrier and it took to the seas the next year. If recent trends were to hold, it is doubtful whether the U.S. Navy could preserve its longstanding supremacy for sea control — especially within Asia’s first island chain — even a decade or two into the future.” ​

U.S. Military: Joint Regional Experts From Justin M. Cobb, Damon B. Loveless and Angela M. Lewis, Small Wars Journal: “If success was measured by how often a subject is mentioned or written about the U.S. military would surely be a smart culture-savvy force to be reckoned with. Despite developing individuals as regional experts and publishing droves of manuals, doctrine, and easy listening audio and online material, the Department of Defense (DoD) continues to provide no standardization or meaningful guidance to the Services on their subsequent use in the Joint environment. Is it more important that every corporal understand the proper tribal morning greeting or that the flag officer understands the deeper sociocultural and historical underpinnings of an adversary militaries paradigm? In terms of the development of regional experts, each Service personnel management process presents a uniquely uncoordinated and non-standard process that provides an almost textbook example of opportunities lost.” ​

Lessons from Insurgent WarfareFrom Octavian Manea & Seth Jones, Small Wars Journal: “Over time, insurgent groups have used some combination of guerilla warfare, conventional warfare, and punishment during a campaign. These are some of the tried and generally well-used strategy options available to insurgent groups..”

Too Much Faith in the F-22 and F-35? From Sebastien Roblin, The National Interest: “An F-22 has a combat radius of some five hundred miles on internal fuel. The F-35 can fly 875 miles when loaded for air-to-air combat. Now consider the thousands of kilometers lying between U.S. bases in the Pacific and Europe and various potential conflict zones.” ​

The Army's Urgent Need to Close Capability Gap From Daniel Gouré, The National Interest: “Over the past year the U.S. Army has been conducting a Strategic Portfolio Analysis Review (SPAR) of its 780 weapons and equipment programs. Championed by Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley, the key requirement of the SPAR is to identify modernization priorities that must be pursued in order to maintain and eventually regain overmatch to credibly deter and defeat near-peer adversaries.” ​